A POT-HUNTER WAITING FOR DUCKS.
But when the steamboat appeared on the scene, both swan and wild geese vanished, never to return.
Memory carries me back to my old ancestral home on the Virginia side of the Potomac, directly opposite the Washington Navy Yard.
In those days, a planter was an epicure by blood, a gourmand by breeding, and as long as his digestion remained unimpaired he could revel in the best of living on the choicest viands; and were he a devotee of the gun, he could amuse himself by killing a variety of game in such quantities that satiety would be apt to ensue.
Yes, the noble river furnished an unfailing supply of succulent food to the dwellers on its banks. The number of fish that swam in the clear waters of the Potomac would seem incredible in these times of purse-ponds and gill-nets. Our overseer used to devote one week in the spring to hauling a small seine, and would catch an abundance of fish to last the plantation the ensuing year, and there were enough herrings salted in barrels, and smoked shad in kits, to half fill our huge cellar that ran underground the whole length of the house. Fresh fish was on every table of the plantation nine months out of the year as a matter of course. The troll lines, set a short distance from the shore, yielded a steady supply of catfish, eels, perch, tobacco-boxes and fresh-water terrapin, or “tarrapin,” as they are called—a luxury only second to their cousin the “diamond-back.” As for the ducks and geese that made their home during winter on the flats between Washington and Alexandria, their number was simply astounding. I have hunted in the last decade from Havre de Grace to Tampa Bay, but never have seen such apparently limitless numbers of ducks as circled in the very sight of the Capitol’s dome some thirty years ago.
The channel was on the Maryland side. It varied from one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards across. For a mile and a half the water was rarely over two feet on the flats at low tide, and not over a fathom at the high-water mark. On these shallow bottoms there grew in the greatest luxuriance a peculiar quality of indigenous plant, called celery-grass, which wild fowl preferred to any other food. About the middle of November the birds began to congregate in such huge flocks that on a clear morning, when suddenly disturbed they took to wing, they made a noise like rolling thunder.
There were sportsmen, of course, at that time in the two cities of Washington and Alexandria, but they confined themselves to the laziest mode of shooting, and followed the creeks and streams that bordered or led into the river. Here the wild fowl afforded fine sport, with but little hardship.
As a general rule, the family on the plantation soon became tired of eating wild ducks; even the incomparable canvas-back palls at length upon the palate, as much as the partridges that are devoured on a wager, one each day for a month. The products of the poultry yard in the end were always preferred to the spoils of the river. Frequently, when company were coming to dinner, it was desirable to have a plentiful supply of game on the table; so my aunt, a famous housewife, would call up Sandy, who, being lame in one leg, was the general utility man of the plantation, one who could turn his hand to anything except regular labor, which he hated as a galley slave his oar, or as much as Rip Van Winkle did to earn an honest living. Sandy resembled Rip in more ways than one, though, fortunately for him, he had no sable Gretchen.
“Take Brother Bush’s gun, Sandy,” my aunt would say, “and go down and bring me some ducks.”
“How many does you want, Miss Jane?”